[MRIC] January 2008 Meeting

[dave.prestel at verizon.net]

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: "Prestel, David J." <david.prestel at ngc.com>

Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:20:35 
To:<Dave.Prestel at verizon.net>
Subject: January 2008 Meeting


The meeting this weekend coincides with a RACES all hands meeting with
the Howard County Office of Emergency Management. Unfortunately, because
attendance at that meeting is mandatory, none of us from Howard County
will be able to attend the MRIC meeting.

Howard County RACES drills occur on the second Saturday of every month
which causes a conflict with the remaining MRIC meetings this year. I
would ask if the group would consider moving those dates either a week
earlier or a week later. 

One final point: The Howard County RACES group strongly advocates the
implementation of a statewide RACES digital traffic handling system.
WinLink2000 is one good example of a system that could be implemented
and is one that we are implementing in Howard County. Our Telpak node
should be on the air by the end of January. We further recommend that
the monthly statewide drills begin using digital traffic handling for
form-based messages, including status reports, requests for assistance,
and the like, in lieu of the verbal message handling that has been used
up to now. We believe that having a voice net for high level
coordination is useful. However experience with the method of traffic
handling used for all of the 2007 monthly drills shows that it is very
slow (very few messages are handled each month) and prone to errors
(repeats and fills have been requested on virtually every message
passed).

Dave Prestel, W8AJR
Howard County RACES Officer